Part 30 (2/2)

A cold knot of hatred filled her heart, and she knew now the feeling that Michael had known just after midnight, when he was sure his sister had been taken from her crypt.

They would find a way to take back what had been stolen from them, find a way to end the evil.

At last she turned away from the window and returned to her bed, the exhaustion of the long night finally overcoming her.

She drifted into sleep, and once more the nightmares came, but when the ancient visage appeared out of the darkness this time, it was no longer the face of a stranger.

It was the face of her grandfather.

The sun was creeping over the horizon as Carl Anderson arrived at Warren Phillips's house, and as its first brilliant rays struck his rheumy eyes, Carl blinked, cringing away from the light as a creature of the night slinks to its den at daybreak.

He felt exposed, and imagined there were eyes everywhere, watching him, uncovering the secret he'd protected for so many years, recognizing him for the skulking thief he knew he was.

He pulled the truck around to the back of Phillips's house, abandoning it with the key still in the ignition as he staggered to the back door, pressing the doorbell with a shaking finger.

He heard the soft chime of the bell within, echoing oddly, as if to signal him that the house was still empty.

Defeated, he sagged down onto the back steps, coughing roughly to clear his throat of the thick mucus that was coagulating there, his breath rasping as he struggled to keep his lungs filled with air.

Hearing a car, he shrank back until he recognized Warren Phillips's Buick gliding down the driveway, then hope surged within him.

Phillips, seeing him, braked the car to an abrupt halt. Then he was at the foot of the steps, helping Carl up, supporting him with one arm as he opened the back door.

”I've been calling all night,” Carl rasped as Phillips helped him through the house to the library. ”Where the h.e.l.l-”

”I've been at the hospital,” Phillips snapped. ”Just take it easy.”

”A shot,” Carl pleaded. ”I'm dying...”

Phillips disappeared for a moment, returning with a hypodermic syringe. Carl's eyes fixed greedily on the needle as he struggled to roll up his sleeve. But then a doubt came into his mind.

”It's not full. Why isn't it a full dose?”

Phillips swabbed Carl's arm with alcohol, and inserted the needle. ”You're lucky I even have this,” he said, pressing the plunger. ”If it weren't for Jenny Sheffield...”

Carl felt the restorative fluid spread through him, reveled in the miraculous warmth that seemed to wash the pain from his body. Already, only a few seconds after the shot, his pulse was smoothing out, the irregular spasms of his heart returning once more to the strong steady beats that would keep his blood surging through his body.

The panic that had consumed him only a moment ago began to recede, and the words Phillips had just spoken slowly sank in. ”Jenny Sheffield?” he repeated. ”But she's-”

”Don't be stupid, Carl. She's not dead. She's in my lab. And if you're lucky, she'll keep you alive until you can find someone else.”

Carl Anderson felt the panic creeping back up. ”I can't do that,” he muttered. ”I pay. I pay a lot-”

”It doesn't matter how much you pay if I don't have anything to sell,” Phillips told him. His eyes fixed darkly on the old man. ”And if I were you, I'd stay out of sight for a while, Carl. You look terrible.”

There was a cruel note in the doctor's voice that chilled Carl's soul. ”But you said-”

Warren Phillips cut him off before he could finish. ”If you want to live, you know what you have to do.”

Ted Anderson came into the kitchen, stopping short when he found no one there except his wife. ”Where's Dad?” he asked.

Mary shrugged. ”He must have gotten up early. He wasn't here when I came down, and the truck's gone.”

Frowning, Ted went to the door leading to the garage. Save for his own worn Chrysler, the garage was empty. Puzzled, he moved to the stove and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the back burner. ”Where the h.e.l.l would he go this early?”

Mary glanced archly at her husband. ”I'm afraid he didn't leave a note. Would you call Kelly?”

Ted went to the bottom of the stairs leading to Kelly's room, calling out, then went up and knocked on the door. ”Kelly? Time to get up.” There was a silence, then he heard his daughter's voice.

”I'll be down in a second.”

Returning to the kitchen, he sat down at the table just as Mary slid a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. A minute later, wrapped in a robe, Kelly appeared. Ted glanced up at her, then looked more closely. Kelly's face was pale and her eyes were edged with dark circles, as if she hadn't slept at all. ”Honey? Are you okay?”

For a moment he wasn't sure Kelly had even heard him. She was staring off into s.p.a.ce, lost in some world of her own. Then her expression changed, as if a veil had dropped over her eyes.

”I guess I didn't sleep very well last night,” she said, her voice flat.

Mary, hearing the strange vacant note in her daughter's voice, looked worriedly at her. ”Do you feel all right?”

Kelly said nothing. What would they say if she told them what had happened last night and what she'd seen this morning? What would they think if she told them that her grandfather had stolen her soul from her?

They'd think she was crazy.

And yet she wasn't crazy. She knew what had happened in the swamp, knew what Clarey Lambert had told her.

This morning, at dawn, she'd seen her grandfather, and finally understood the terrifying vision that had tormented her for as long as she could remember.

And knew that it wasn't a vision from her imagination at all.

It was a vision of the truth.

A truth she couldn't speak of to anyone except Michael Sheffield, because no one else would believe her.

”I-I'm fine,” she murmured at last.

But she wasn't fine at all.

In the bright light of a perfect summer morning, when she should have been feeling good about everything, she felt only a dark terror.

A terror she realized might never leave her.

Ted pulled the Chrysler through the gates of Villejeune Links Estates and was relieved to see his father's pickup truck parked in front of the trailer that served as a construction office. Ted was early himself this morning, and except for his father's truck, the site was still empty. He pulled the Chrysler alongside the truck, shut off the engine, and went into the trailer.

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